Title: Just a Little Mad
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I don't own Alice 2009 and I don't own Primeval, and if there's anything else anyone recognises, well, I don't own that either.
Rating: PG
Summary: Luckily for Stephen, Connor is more than what he seems.
Notes: Gah. I know nothing of New York City. I bet I'm getting the damn hospital wrong. Wikipedia is evil, I'm telling you. Enjoy the update?
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As they got spat out of the weird magic wormhole that Hatter's (David -- it was weird to think of Hatter having a normal name) brother was able to somehow make, they were greeted by Jack looking pretty stunned and a bunch of other people looking everything from shocked to exasperated, hanging around a giant sci-fi-ish sort of mirror thing. Actually, it was the Earthlings who looked exasperated. Alice suspected that they'd been just about to be sent home and this had delayed it. However little, it was still a delay for all these people with homes and families waiting for them.
Including her father. "Dad," she said in relief as he approached her. Then she was wrapped up in a hug.
"Everything go alright, Jellybean?" he asked. He seemed to be overusing the nickname, but Alice had the feeling he was trying to make up for lost time and reassure her that he still remembered.
She smiled at him. "Yeah. Hat -- David and Connor found out why. It was pretty much that Dodo's a big jerk."
"Everyone's alright, though?" he asked, looking at Connor and Stephen as they shot out of the wormhole. Connor immediately sagged, looking exhausted, and Stephen half carried him to the side of the room, scolding from the look of them. The wormhole closed behind them.
Alice pursed her lips, glancing over to where Hatter -- David was talking to Jack, hands gesticulating, the clear cause of Jack's face darkening, "Maybe I'd better go check on Connor," she said. They headed over to where Connor was sitting indian-style on the floor, Stephen kneeling next to him, looking worried. "You okay?" she asked Connor.
"Fine," he mumbled.
"Not fine," Stephen contradicted. "You wore yourself out getting us away from the guards at the casino, and did you even get any rest at all between when you tried to get us home at first and when you came looking for me? Because you already looked like hell when you dragged me off," he scolded.
"It's not a big deal," Connor replied. "Really. I just need a bit of food and I'll be fine."
Her father eyed him. "You're short a lot of minerals and straight up carbohydrates, aren't you?" he asked. "You need a shot of sugar then a lot of red meat. Unless you're a vegetarian, but you need a pretty solid dose of iron in you, not to mention-"
Connor shook his head. "A bit of chocolate and I'll be fine. I'm not that hungry."
"Zinc, then," her father insisted. "If you've got a reduced appetite when you need all that, something's not right."
Stephen looked him over. "Are you a doctor?" he asked.
Her dad shook his head. "Just a PhD in biochem," he said. "Once we get back you can just . . . come . . ." he suddenly looked stricken. "Carol," he said. "What am I going to say? I just vanished for ten years."
"It wasn't your fault," Alice hurried to tell him. "You didn't remember. They didn't let you."
He shook his head. "That's not the point, Alice. What am I going to tell your mother? That I was kidnapped by a bunch of storybook characters?"
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David pulled the new king aside. "I need to talk to you about the Great Library and Dodo."
"Dodo?" asked Jack Heart.
He suddenly realised that Jack probably hadn't had every in that The Hatter had with the Resistance. They couldn't have afforded to trust him with too much, simply because of his position. "Part of the Resistance hid in the Great Library," he explained. "The bloke in charge of it's Dodo." He took a deep breath to keep from bursting into a rant about what the bloody bird had taken from him. "Ten years ago, when your -- the Queen ordered the . . . execution of-" he was horrified to hear his voice crack. But Connor and his sentimental looks, Alice's hunt for Jack and her dad, Stephen's good-natured insistence on helping them even though he was an Oyster and could have just headed home, it had all hammered at the armour he'd built up for himself.
Jack Heart looked . . . sympathetic. It was really pretty mimsy to see. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know it doesn't really mean anything, but I have to at least say it."
He shook it off. "Thanks, but you didn't do it." Then he focussed. "So, Conn and I were told, if we were ever in trouble to get to the Library for help. Dodo, he knew Conn's Gift was something the Queen'd want badly, so he sent Conn away, told him I was dead. When I got there, he told me Connor was dead. He tried to get me killed off so he could bring Conn back and use his Gift . . ." It made him so angry, because he'd trusted Dodo not to be planning his death from the start. He'd thought they were more or less on the same side and Dodo had just let some stupid idealism about what people had to do to get by get in the way of his relationship with David.
"You're joking," Jack said, looking baffled. "Even I knew not to try bargaining with the last Hatter." He shook his head. "I'll see about speaking with Caterpillar about what to do about him. Politically, killing what everyone thought was the last of the Hatters was a stupid move, never mind the immorality of it all." Then he looked earnestly at him. "Hatter, I know we got off on the wrong foot, and I'm sorry about that. I knew I couldn't bargain around you so I took a different tack." He shook his head. "What I'm trying to say is, can I ask you to help me? I need someone to negotiate with the Resistance cells that Caterpillar only has a nominal hold on. I need someone who knows the City from the bottom up, who knows the Teaheads and-"
David shook his own head. "No. Maybe . . . maybe sometime, Heart. But Connor and Alice both live in the Oyster world. I want to see my brother again. I'd like to know why Alice and Stephen are so mimsy about how things work here. And I'm tired of being the one who's always there when they pass the hat."
Eyeing him a moment, Jack suddenly grabbed a passing suit. "The Hatter wants to set up in the Oyster world. At least for a while. As a reward for his service to Wonderland, I want the White Rabbit to assist him with this. Collect the field package for him." The suit nodded, hurrying off. "You'll need that for settling into the Oyster world," he told David. "They don't bargain there, for the most part. At least in the places Alice and Connor are likely to be. In most of those places, the price of the item's the price of the item. There's also a bit of a pamphlet, just for some quick explanations of things so you don't look like a Teahead in the casino." He shrugged. "Alice and Connor," he paused, "And Stephen too, probably, they'll help you more, but if you find that you have to go out to buy something on your own without them there, you won't have too many surprises."
David nodded. "Thanks." Glancing back, he suddenly saw Connor looking pale and shocky, Alice and her dad looking worried and Stephen looking back and forth between them, like there might be two crises happening at once. "Gotta go, Majesty. Sorry to have delayed sending the Oysters home and all."
He hurried off, vaguely aware of Jack starting the Mirror up and sending Oysters through. When he caught up to the others, Alice and her dad were rabbiting on about what to say to Alice's mum when they couldn't tell the woman the truth, but would have to give her some story to explain why the man hadn't come home to his wife for a decade.
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Stephen was thinking quickly, concerned about the way that Connor's condition had so suddenly deteriorated. "We need to get you something to eat, Connor," he said. Then he looked at Alice. "I know you're worried about your mum's reaction, but Connor's been wearing himself out for a while now."
She looked concerned, but nodded. "We'll just have to ask Jack if we can line jump."
David arrived then. "Conn? What's wrong?"
"I don't feel so good," Connor admitted, looking dazed, pale, possibly greenish, then lost his balance while already sitting to slump heavily against Stephen.
"Connor!" David shoved Stephen away, panic on his face as he cradled his brother close to him.
"We need a doctor," Stephen said, about to grab Jack and demand his old friend help.
Alice's father grabbed Stephen's arm. "Don't. There isn't anything like a decent comprehensive healthcare system here," he said. "I know you Brits have your NHS thing, but they don't even have the kinds of facilities you'd find in third world countries here. It's a lot closer to field medicine and mediaeval barbering. If you find someone with a healing Gift, you're golden, but between the Wonderland way of looking at things and the Queen's obsession with controlling the population, they're about two hundred years behind the times when you find someone who could be called a doctor."
"Then we definitely need to line jump," Alice said. She was on her feet and heading for Jack. A few quick words and people were clearing out of the way.
"I'm sorry," Alice was saying to the people pressed away from the magic mirror.
The police officer who'd made that terrible joke earlier about shuffling someone's deck shook his head. "It's a medical emergency, not something stupid. Don't worry about it."
It took a few tries and a lot of reassurance from Alice and Jack before David let them carry his brother to the mirror. They went through, the three from Earth being practically hurled from the mirror at the far end, Stephen barely managing to cushion Alice, rolling with her, while her father skidded into a wall. Connor and David came out easily, but Connor sagged to the floor. "Dad!" Alice shouted, hurling herself at her father.
"I'm okay," the man groaned. "Worry about your friend."
"Do you have a mobile?" Stephen demanded of her.
"A mobile what?" she asked.
"A phone!" he half shouted, aware that the panic was making him a little overly tense.
She fumbled it out of a pocket, his shouting seeming to shake her out of her own panic. She dialled, then started to describe the situation. "Thank God we found shoes," Stephen muttered, looking around the construction there.
In a short time there were sirens and paramedics and Connor was being loaded into an ambulance, Alice's father, who had broken an arm on his landing after all, was to follow in another. "What the hell were you folks doing in here?" demanded the woman taking down Connor's medical information as best Stephen could recall it.
Working at the ARC had made the answer to questions he couldn't answer reflexive. "I'm sorry, that's classified."
"By who?" demanded the woman. "'Cause you don't sound American."
"The Home Office in Britain," Stephen told her smoothly. Inspiration made him add, "Dr. Hamilton and both Connor and David Temple have become involved in our project and unfortunately I cannot answer any questions about the specific circumstances under which their medical issues occurred. Once we get to the hospital I'll have to call my superiors." He handed over the ID card that had the Home Office numbers and what-all.
It got him a sceptical look, but apparently his ID and Connor's were sufficient to convince her that they might be MI5 or some such, and he sat with David in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, had to half sit on the man when he got belligerent over his brother being taken for a few tests and played secret agent man any time someone looked like they might make Dr. Hamilton try to explain his ten-year disappearance.
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Things were awfully blurry for a while for Connor. He was vaguely aware of Stephen half holding him up, of saying something about feeling sick to David before suddenly being nearly in his brother's lap. That was sort of nice in that he'd really missed David and they'd had no time to really hang out and be brothers again yet, but it was sort of really unmanly and Stephen was probably planning to take the mick about it.
There was a sense of moving, of going through a Rabbit Hole, but not one of his, which made him feel all weird and out of control.
It all just sort of faded in and out. Sirens, an ambulance, Stephen and David and paramedics. When the world came back into focus a moment he was in something that looked like an A&E, but something was off. He couldn't put a finger on why it was off. American voices. That was it. Why were there so many Americans about?
Finally he faded back in for real. He was lying on a trolley, an IV in his arm, Stephen pacing around having a low-voiced argument with a doctor while David looked on anxiously and Alice and her dad just looked confused. "David? Stephen?" he asked, hearing his voice crack a bit. He cleared it.
"Conn, you're alright!" David looked relieved.
Stephen glared at him. "Next time, don't say you're fine when you're not."
"What he said," David agreed with Stephen.
"You don't need to mother hen me," Connor grumbled. "Have you called Lester yet?"
An arrested look on his face, Stephen said, "No."
Connor rolled his eyes and reached into a pocket, finding his mobile still there, still okay, and winced at the thought of the international roaming charges he was about to accumulate. He dialled the private line that would get them Lester. "James Lester," came the crisp tones of the administrator.
"Hey, Lester. Erm . . . Stephen and me, we might need a bit of a rescue."
"Connor?" Lester sounded stunned. "Where are you?"
"Just a sec," he told the man. "Where are we?"
"New York Presbyterian Emerge," Alice answered.
Connor frowned. "Where?"
She blinked, then said, "The Columbia University Medical Center emergency room."
"Right," Connor repeated the information to Lester.
There was a very long pause. "How on God's green earth did you and Hart wind up in New York City?" Lester asked.
Stephen snatched the phone from Connor's hand. "Lester, we've got a bit of a problem here, because when we came out of the anomaly-" Stephen stopped. Lester was probably being nasty during that pause. "Yes, there was an anomaly." Another pause during which he shot a sidelong look at Connor. "I don't know what Cutter saw, but Connor and I wound up going through an anomaly. We've picked up a few people on the way." During this pause, Connor could just about picture the look on Lester's face. It was very sour. "Well, it seems that Connor and his mum wound up in a witness protection sort of thing not long after his twin brother vanished through an anomaly."
"That's creative," Connor commented idly. Stephen poked him in the side and gave him a warning look.
"Well, don't you think it explains his unusually creative view of the world?" Stephen asked Lester in response to something Connor would bet had to do with the convenience of their producing a twin brother from nothing. "Well, unless you want to tell me that Helen's made a clone of Connor for some reason-" He was cut off again. "Yes, I did say a few. Dr. Hamilton vanished ten years ago, and his daughter went looking for him." Alice and her dad both suddenly snapped to attention. "Well, he can hardly tell his wife an colleagues that he went through a magic portal in time, can he?"
"Portal in time?" Alice asked. Connor hastily shushed her. If Lester heard that he might get suspicious.
Stephen suddenly relaxed. "Yes, Dr. Hamilton. He said he's a biochemist. We don't have one of those -- I specialise in microbiology, Lester, it's not the same thing at all, and just because Connor can moonlight doesn't mean that he shouldn't be allowed to focus on something, even if it's just tinkering."
"I hate biochem," Connor grumbled. "I'm not too happy about all the geomagnetics either, but biochem's way worse."
David looked confused, and Connor realised he had a lot of explaining to do for his brother.
"So, you get someone out here so we can get home, bring along all the confidentiality agreements, and you can always offer Dr. Hamilton a job while you're at it," Stephen was finishing up. "Great," he said. "Especially since I think they're starting to think I'm lying when I say I work for the Home Office." Another pause, Stephen's face looked stricken a moment, then he said, "I thought you weren't going to allow Cutter to dictate to you." There was a last pause and Stephen said hoarsely, "Thank you." Then he hung up.
Alice was the first to speak. "Magic portal in time?" she repeated.
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